Cloud Computing

By: Hajar ElShafei Menna-Allah Mohamed

Outline
What is Cloud Computing? The Nature of Cloud Computing. Cloud computing infrastructure models. Cloud Computing benefits. Evaluating Risk in Cloud Computing. Security on the Cloud. Can You Do Everything In the Cloud that You Can Do with Conventional Software? Finally Cloud Computing is GREEN.

What is Cloud Computing?

The chairman of the Cloud Summit Executive 2008 conference reportedly started the event by joking that he asked 20 people to define Cloud Computing, and got 22 different answers. Something that will profoundly change the way people work and companies operate. (The Economist) Reliance on the Internet for satisfying the computing needs of the users. (Wikipedia) The next step in the evolution of software-as-a-service (SaaS) technology. (Carey, Arizona State Universitys online business publication)

What is Cloud Computing?

The ability to rent a virtual server, load software on it, turn it on and off at will, or clone it ten times to meet a sudden workload demand. Storing and securing immense amounts of data that is accessible only by authorized applications and users. It can be supported by a cloud provider that sets up a platform that includes the OS, Apache, a MySQL database, Perl, Python, and PHP with the ability to scale automatically in response to changing workloads.

What is Cloud Computing?

The Most Meaningful: Cloud Computing is a form of software-as-a-service. Wikipedia defines software-as-a-service (SaaS) as a model of software deployment where an application is hosted as a service provided to customers across the Internet. By eliminating the need to install and run the application on the customer's own computer, SaaS alleviates the customer's burden of software maintenance, ongoing operation, and support. Therefore Cloud Computing is providing IT infrastructure and environment that is dynamically scalable over the Internet to develop/host/run services and applications, on demand, with pay-as-you-go pricing, as a service.

What is Cloud Computing?

The Nature of Cloud Computing

1. Virtual machines as the standard deployment object:
Virtualization enhances flexibility because it abstracts the hardware to the point where software stacks can be deployed and redeployed without being tied to a specific physical server. Virtualization enables a dynamic datacenter where servers provide a pool of resources that are harnessed as needed, and where the relationship of applications to compute, storage, and network resources changes dynamically in order to meet both workload and business demands. With application deployment decoupled from server deployment, applications can be deployed and scaled rapidly, without having to first procure physical servers.

The Nature of Cloud Computing

2. The on-demand, self-service, pay-by-use model:
The on-demand nature of Cloud Computing helps to support the performance and capacity aspects of service-level objectives. The self-service nature of Cloud Computing allows organizations to create elastic environments that expand and contract based on the workload and target performance parameters. The pay-by-use nature of Cloud Computing may take the form of equipment lease that guarantees a minimum level of service from a cloud provider. The ability to use and pay for only the resources used shifts the risk of how much infrastructure to purchase from the organization developing the application to the cloud provider.

The Nature of Cloud Computing

3. Infrastructure is programmable:
A developer can use a cloud providers API to create not only an applications initial composition onto virtual machines, but also how it scales and evolves to accommodate workload changes. To use Cloud Computing most effectively, a developer must also be an architect, and that architect needs to be able to create a self-monitoring and self-expanding application. The developer/architect needs to understand when its appropriate to create a new thread versus create a new virtual machine, along with the architectural patterns for how they are interconnected.

The Nature of Cloud Computing

4. Applications are composed and are built to be composable:
This requires having simple, clear functions, and well-documented APIs. o The New York Times wished to convert 11 million articles and images in its archive to PDF format (almost 1TB of data); their internal IT organization said that it would take seven weeks. In the meantime, one developer using 100 Amazon EC2 simple Web service interface instances running Hadoop completed the job in 24 hours for less than $300.

The Nature of Cloud Computing

5. Services are delivered over the network:
Cloud Computing extends the existing trend of making services available over the network, The beauty of Internet-based service delivery is that applications can be made available anywhere, and at any time.

6. The role of open source software:

Open source software plays an important role in Cloud Computing by allowing its basic software elements to be created from easily accessible components, This enable Cloud Computing applications to be created, deployed, and dynamically scaled on demand.

Cloud Computing infrastructure models

Clouds can be categorized as public, private, or hybrid: A public cloud provides a flexible, pay-per-use IT environment that helps the business to better match actual IT demand to expenditure, to decrease capital outlay for IT infrastructure, and to shift IT investment and risk to a third party. In addition, users typically realize access to greater IT functionality along with automatic, faster control over the deployment of IT resources to support their work. Public Clouds offer the ability to scale up and down on demand, and shift infrastructure risks from the enterprise to the cloud provider.

Cloud Computing infrastructure models

A private cloud operates within an enterprise datacenter or in an externally hosted datacenter for the sole benefit of a single enterprise. A private cloud is easier to align with security, compliance, and regulatory requirements, and provides more enterprise control over deployment and use. The private clouds and its infrastructure are owned by the company. A hybrid cloud delivers IT through a mix of both public and private clouds. A public cloud can be used to perform periodic tasks that can be deployed easily on a public cloud. If the data is small, or the application is stateless, a hybrid cloud can be much more successful than if large amounts of data must be transferred into a public cloud for a small amount of processing.

Cloud Computing infrastructure models

Cloud Computing benefits

Low start-up costs: make Cloud Computing especially attractive to small businesses and entrepreneurs. Low cost for sporadic use: TurboTax online is free for standard taxpayers. Similarly, some cloud-based business services, such as Google Apps, do not need to be purchased for one-time or infrequent computing. Ease of management: No need to worry about keeping licenses current or purchasing additional hardware. Scalability: High-growth companies can easily expand the number of users and locations at modest cost.

Cloud Computing benefits

Device and location independence: The way you access a cloud could be your desktop. It could be someone else's computer. It could be a smart phone. Rapid innovation: Because vendors are able to roll out new features incrementally, they can respond to user needs more rapidly.

Cloud Computing benefits

As quoted by Todd Pierce, Genentech's vice president of corporate information technology:
Cloud Computing saves us millions of dollars over five years over any of the other alternatives we looked at and provides us with worldwide data recovery, unprecedented integration and ease of use, and device independence.

Scalability is an additional Cloud Computing advantage that Genentech has experienced:

"You can go from one to 15,000 [users] instantly. Just imagine if you tried to do that in your own data center. It would take weeks just to order the equipment and get it installed. ... You don't need all that capacity 365 days a year; you need it at peaks, and that's possible with Google Apps."

Evaluating Risk in Cloud Computing

In three areas of risk, Cloud Computing enjoys big advantages: Upgrade management: With SaaS, applications are always current. In traditional on premise environments, software updates occur at intervals, and they typically represent major changes in functionality and sometimes incur significant costs. With cloud-based applications, updates happen automatically. Updates are incremental and typically do not disrupt workflow. You never need to worry about updating hardware to accommodate new software capabilities. Spam and virus threats: Cloud Computing providers optimize the load across data centers so that the impact of a large attack is defused.

Evaluating Risk in Cloud Computing

Public accountability: Established Cloud Computing providers understand that switching costs in the cloud are lower. They must work to establish and maintain the customers trust. They might set in place rigorous security controls and protocols to which they hold themselves accountable by regular, independent audit, for example.

Security on the Cloud

Policy process and technology controls, a secure implementation is essential to protect against these and other security risks. A more drastic measure is to host sensitive applications in controlled areas that are physically and logically separated from other cloud tenants.

Data transfers:
Strong encryption, physical and logical containment techniques can be used to prevent disclosure

Examples: Google docs, Animotos Mashup tool that creates a video from a set of images and music.

Can You Do Everything In the Cloud that You Can Do with Conventional Software?
Not yet. The range and functionality of applications may be a limitation currently, but the array of Cloud Computing services available to businesses is increasing. There are several factors driving this trend:
A number of companies, including Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and IBM, have built enormous datacenter-based computing capacity all over the world to support their Web services offerings (search, instant messaging, Web-based retail, etc.). With this computing infrastructure in place, these companies are already poised to offer new cloud based software applications. Large enterprise software solutions, such as ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) applications, have traditionally only been affordable to very big enterprises with big IT budgets. However, companies that sell these solutions are finding they can reach small to medium businesses by making their very expensive, very complex applications available as Internet-based software services. These new market segments have encouraged them to expand their SaaS offerings.

Can You Do Everything In the Cloud that You Can Do with Conventional Software?
New kinds of hardware, such as Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs), lighter and more portable notebook computers (net books), and even high-end smart phones with Internet accessibility, make it easier for end-users to log into their cloud based applications any time, any place. This means the market for SaaS is also being driven at the user end by new Internet accessible devices.

Finally Cloud Computing is

Finally Cloud Computing is GREEN

Studies show that customers of Cloud Computing services produce 95 percent less carbon, on average, compared with running equivalent software in on-premise application servers.
Marc Benioff, Salesforce.coms chairman and CEO, said in a statement. The Salesforce.com community saved an estimated 170,900 tons of carbon in 2010 the equivalent of taking 37,000 cars off the road, or avoiding the consumption of 19.5 million gallons of gas.

Some of the reasons for such savings seem to be obvious. With its ondemand model, Cloud Computing eliminates to keep data centers up and running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, thereby reducing electricity consumption. And with most of the worlds generation of electricity being thermal-based, this translates to significant reductions in carbon dioxide emissions. Therefore, Cloud Computing is green; how green is it is still subject to debate.

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